Those of us who expect a modicum of leadership from the United States are getting a rude awakening. The U.S. Congress makes a law violating the Constitution while trying to define what "anti-Semitism" prohibits free speech. U.S. President Joe Biden defines the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the major university campuses as "anti-Semitism." Moreover, their media automatically labels all speeches as "anti-Israeli." Except the students, the Congresspeople, the president and the media all begin their analyses with a preamble as "In the aftermath of the brutal Hamas massacre of Oct. 7..."

Their account of that shameful intelligence fiasco of Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu government and the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) despicable and embarrassing mess in front of a handful of Hamas militants becomes more atrocious every day: "October 7 raid to massacre, kidnap, mutilate and brutalize thousands of people..." (Finally, they stopped talking about rapes and other sexual harassments because they could not find credible medical reports!)

Why? Why can't the politicians and media personalities in the U.S. and some European countries stick with the pure facts of the genocide Netanyahu and some members of his Cabinet committed? While at the same time, Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak aid and abet the massacres in Gaza by sending money, arms and ammunitions to Israel.

Western bias

Even the terminology they use in describing what is happening in Palestine shows their malicious intent. Look at their speeches and newspaper headlines and you will see that it is "Hamas’ war on Israel." Even the most unbiased of them would term it "Israel-Gaza War" or "Conflict in Israel" as if it were not the Israeli air force, tanks and armored vehicles that entered the towns and villages of the innocent Palestinians. Yes, Hamas is an acronym of the official name, Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement), of the Palestinian political and military movement governing parts of the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. However, it is not a terror organization like Daesh. "Religious nationalism" should be understood as "nationalism as a religion" itself; not as the relationship of nationalism to a particular religious belief, dogma, ideology or affiliation. Hamas and similar political-military organizations that go under the rubric of "religious nationalism" are not killing the faithful of other religions.

What makes such organizations different from terrorist groups is that they openly commit themselves to military action against legal armies and not innocent civilians.

At this point, we should clarify a couple of notions:

First, Zionism is not a religious affiliation but an ideology legitimizing the occupation, ostracization and banishment of non-Jews from certain areas. You do not have to be a believer in Judaism to be a Zionist. The most famous example of non-Jewish Zionists is President Biden. The corollary of this is that to be against Zionism does not make one an enemy of Jews if those people are not Zionists. How the purely religious concept of Zionism was converted into a military philosophy cannot be explained easily. That peace-loving Jews, the meek and gentle people who have had mixed with many people and lived comfortably in many different countries for many ages sought to rejoin the "Hill of Jerusalem on which the city of David was built." That was Zion. But before World War I, its definition gradually changed; it became a war cry of those who wanted to expel non-Jews from those hills.

Hamas, and other nationalist Palestinian organizations before it, stress the necessity of maintaining the independence of Palestinian national decision-making – outside forces should not be allowed to intervene – and it asserts its duty and role in the liberation of Palestine from Zionist occupation. Since that Zionist occupation was realized, furthered and maintained by the legal state apparatus of Israel, Hamas’s fight is with Israel’s conscript and reserve soldiers, whether they are on the front benches or taking a rest at the army-appointed residences at the village Kfar Azza or dancing in an army-organized morale-booster at the Re'im music festival. (We still don’t know exactly who provided the warplanes that blazed away the "civilians" at Re’im.)

Second, the new House bill (H.R. 6090) that supposedly provides a definition of anti-Semitism to be enforced by the federal government to prevent anti-discrimination would actually label anyone who calls ending the genocide in Gaza "a terrorist criminal" and if you defend yourself against the Zionist thugs in a New York neighborhood you could be arrested. But if you support genocide, then you are welcome; you are free to express your opinion. Hoping it would not become the law of the land, that bill clearly shows the confusion, either calculated or out of ignorance that is quite common among the American people, about the term "anti-Semitism." Even Wikipedia defines it as "hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews."

Israeli sources define it as "attempts to justify the elimination of the State of Israel." If you want the State of Palestine "from the river to the sea" then you are anti-Semitic. However, nothing can be further from the truth.

Semitic identity, Israeli politics

Semitic people, or Semites, are the people of the Middle East, including Arabs, Jews, Akkadians and Phoenicians. Historically, this biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah, together with the parallel terms Hamites and Japhetites. Why should you be against all the Jews if you are not approving the policies of Ariel Sharon or Netanyahu, illegal expansion of the borders of Israel? The state of Israel was created to be part of Palestine in 1946. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. But the plan was intentionally so ambiguous that even the most ardent defenders of the idea of a homeland for Jews in the Middle East could not support it. Hannah Arendt, a German American historian and philosopher, rejected the Partition Plan of Palestine because it would not end up in the creation of a binational solution in Palestine. Arendt and many other Jewish intellectuals argued that a binational Palestine state or a Jewish commonwealth should have been the outcome of a working agreement with Arabs and other Mediterranean peoples. Arendt opposed Zionism, and she wrestled with Israel for over three decades. She derided Jewish political sovereignty and expressed disgust at Zionism.

If you are interested, you can get her books before they become banned in the United States because Arendt is "anti-Semitic" for rejecting Zionism.

Not only Arendt, but even several supporters of the idea of the creation of a Jewish army, did not support the ambiguous partition plan of Palestine because it was not going to realize a commonwealth of all people in the area. The Zionists’ armed forces would never allow the coexistence of Muslim people in the new state. Hence, the Zionists gradually occupied the entirety of Palestine and exiled Muslims to the west of the Jordan River (thus: the West Bank) and to the Gaza Strip. More than 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in what became known as the Nakba, or "catastrophe."

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was created, and its leadership accepted the prospect of a two-state solution. But Israeli authorities continued their massacres, pushing the PLO, under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, to the idea of a single state that extend from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea to encompass its historic territories. Now, the U.S. House of Representatives, neglecting all those historical facts wants to throw you into jail if you chant "From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free."

It cannot. Even the U.S. Congress or the omnipotent president of the U.S. could change the course of history. They have to "pronounce without fear or favor" what it is, as Hannah Arendt had done: The 1949 Partition Plan did not work. There must be a new solution based on the map of 1967 Israel.